So I've been thinking recently about the best way to describe the non-quantifiable parts of a players game, and was just playing around in R (statistical software suite) with decision trees working with some categorical stats. I got the idea after playing around with some libraries that we could attempt to classify players by certain 'skills' they possess. Now this might not sound like anything purposeful or exciting, but hear me out.

If you want to completely describe a player's game, which skills would you have to mention? With enough collaboration, if we reach a consensus list, we could deduce a minimal skill profile (which I've dubbed as a player's 'MinSkE' in the title). For example, say three people discuss Kobe, and have the following lists:

in this case, Kobe's MinSkE would be: volume scoring, durability since all three appear on each list (note: this isn't my belief, these are just examples). Now in general the skills won't appear on every list, since there will be a much larger sample of contributors than three guys. Note that they also don't have to be positive, there can be flaws as well...remember, the objective is to completely describe a player's game using as few skills/flaws as possible.

This might be a useful way to describe the non-quantifiable aspects of a guy's game, so in order to store the data, I'm going to create a spreadsheet after we have some input. Feel free to start with any players you want.

So I've been thinking recently about the best way to describe the non-quantifiable parts of a players game, and was just playing around in R (statistical software suite) with decision trees working with some categorical stats. I got the idea after playing around with some libraries that we could attempt to classify players by certain 'skills' they possess. Now this might not sound like anything purposeful or exciting, but hear me out.

If you want to completely describe a player's game, which skills would you have to mention? With enough collaboration, if we reach a consensus list, we could deduce a minimal skill profile (which I've dubbed as a player's 'MinSkE' in the title). For example, say three people discuss Kobe, and have the following lists:

in this case, Kobe's MinSkE would be: volume scoring, durability since all three appear on each list (note: this isn't my belief, these are just examples). Now in general the skills won't appear on every list, since there will be a much larger sample of contributors than three guys. Note that they also don't have to be positive, there can be flaws as well...remember, the objective is to completely describe a player's game using as few skills/flaws as possible.

This might be a useful way to describe the non-quantifiable aspects of a guy's game, so in order to store the data, I'm going to create a spreadsheet after we have some input. Feel free to start with any players you want.

With all the agendas running rampant on this site I would imagine that the MinSkE for the more polarizing players will wind up uncharacteristically small or even empty.

Is the ultimate goal to simply assign players a list of non-quantifiable abilities, or to actually go about trying to measure those abilities in a quantifiable manner?

With all the agendas running rampant on this site I would imagine that the MinSkE for the more polarizing players will wind up uncharacteristically small or even empty.

Is the ultimate goal to simply assign players a list of non-quantifiable abilities, or to actually go about trying to measure those abilities in a quantifiable manner?

The former...I have no interest in comparing players against one another, just in describing players themselves as well as possible. Once we have enough data (if this gets off the ground) it would be interesting to look at individuals with similar MinSkEs and think about whether they actually played similarly (but this would be down the line a bit).

EDIT: Agendas could be an issue, but I think we'll be able to parse out the gold from rubbish since the lists should be well-organized.

You may want to have a preliminary brainstorming session to generate a tangible list of "intangibles" that we could then choose from - and still add to if need be - so as to avoid duplicates, or have some process for combining and or removing similar abilities or meaningless abilities .

EDIT: I guess meaningless abilities would tend to get weeded out by the method you're using to get the MinSkE

You may want to have a preliminary brainstorming session to generate a tangible list of "intangibles" that we could then choose from - and still add to if need be - so as to avoid duplicates, or have some process for combining and or removing similar abilities or meaningless abilities .

I concur. It's actually quite late here though, so I'll have to leave this until tomorrow. Hopefully a couple of other people are interested so we can get the ball rolling.

some people are going to have shorter lists for some guys, others might have longer lists for the same players. Some people might add qualifiers (i.e. subpar, great, etc.) while others might avoid those descriptors. A given trait doesn't have to appear on ALL posters' lists, just frequently enough as dictated by the number of posts in which he appears (as the sample size goes up, the required percentage goes down) to be part of his MinSkE profile.